“Death is sort of an affront
to American life. It’s so
anti- aspirational.”
Author Zadie Smith, quoted
in The Guardian
“After repute, oblivion.”
Roman Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, quoted in
The New York Times
“Grief and disappointment
give rise to anger,
anger to envy, envy to
malice, and malice to grief
again, till the whole circle
be completed.”
Philosopher David Hume,
quoted in ArtsJournal.com
“Every sin is the result of
a collaboration.”
Author Stephen Crane, in the
Los Angeles Times
“Guilt to motherhood is
like grapes to wine.”
Author Fay Weldon, quoted in
GoodReads.com
“The idea that we can
enjoy the benefits of soci-
ety while owing nothing in
return is literally infantile.
Only children owe nothing.”
Writer Sebastian Junger,
quoted in Vox.com
“Familiarity breeds
contempt—and children,”
Mark Twain, quoted in
The Times (U.K.)Talking points
Wit &
Wisdom
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NEWS 19
Poll watch
Q27% of Americans
say the Supreme Court
should overturn Roe v.
Wade, while 60% say it
should be upheld. 75% of
Americans say abortion
access should be left to
women and their doctors,
while 20% say it should
be regulated by law.
Washington Post/ABC News
Q95% of Democrats
believe climate change is
a serious problem facing
the country, an increase
of 11 points over seven
years. Over that period,
the percentage of Repub-
licans who see climate
change as a serious prob-
lem fell 10 points, to 39%.
Washington Post/ABC NewsGOP: An alarming rise in violent rhetoric
At a conservative rally in
Idaho last month, a young
man had a sincere question
for a Republican state repre-
sentative: “When do we get
to use the guns?” he asked.
“How many elections are
they going to steal before we
kill these people?” In Ohio,
leading Senate candidate Josh
Mandel urged Republicans to
defy the “tyranny” of federal
vaccine mandates, saying, “When the Gestapo
show up at your front door, you know what to
do.” These are not isolated incidents, said Lisa
Lerer and Astead Herndon in The New York
Times. Ten months after former President Trump
stoked a violent uprising at the U.S. Capitol,
“threats of violence are becoming commonplace
among a significant segment of the Republican
Party.” School board members and public-health
and election officials have faced a barrage of
death threats that have led hundreds to quit.
Many pro-Trump Republicans speak of politics
as “a kind of holy war” in which the use of force
is justifiable against the evil forces who dislodged
their hero from power.In response to the violent rhetoric, Republican
leaders are conspicuously silent, said Jill Colvin
in the Associated Press. They said nothing when
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) tweeted last week ananime video that depicted
him slaying progressive Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
and attacking President
Biden, or when the 13
Republican House members
who voted for President
Biden’s infrastructure bill
were called “traitors” and
inundated with death threats.
Meanwhile, a growing num-
ber of Republican voters say
violence may be necessary to “save” the nation,
said Reid Wilson in TheHill.com. In a recent poll
by the Public Religion Research Institute, 30 per-
cent of Republicans agreed the U.S. has “gotten
so far off track” that “true American patriots
may have to resort to violence.”No one should be surprised, said Matt Ford in
NewRepublic.com. For years, Trump, the right-
wing media, and other GOP elected officials have
persuaded millions of Americans that Democrats
are Marxist “tyrants” hell-bent on persecut-
ing real Americans—and now have many vot-
ers believing they’re rigging elections. Experts
on authoritarianism are ringing “alarm bells,”
said John Haltiwanger in BusinessInsider.com.
“Threats of violence lead to actual violence,” said
Yale historian Joanne Freeman, who’s written
about the run-up to the Civil War. “They maim
democracy. And run the risk of killing it.”The word “woke” used to have a meaning, said
Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post, but
it’s become “an empty, all-purpose insult hurled
by conservative propagandists, anti- vaccine fabu-
lists,” and reactionaries who deny the existence
of racism and sexism. Originally, “woke” was
popularized in the African-American community,
to describe waking up to the racism and bigotry
that permeated this country’s history and pres-
ent. “These days,” I never hear people of color,
LGBTQ Americans, “or any other constituen-
cies of the supposed ‘woke mob’ use the word.”
Instead, you hear it from elites desperate to flout
their “populist credentials.” Even NFL star Aaron
Rodgers is now whining that “the woke mob”
was persecuting him after he lied about receiving
the Covid vaccine. Conservatives are master mar-
keters, said Charles Blow in The New York Times,
and they’ve made the woke brand “toxic” as a
way of demeaning any “assessment of history and
society that makes them uncomfortable.”Wokeness “doesn’t have a branding problem,”
said Noah Rothman in Commentary.org. “It is a
defective product.” Having grown far beyond an
earnest attempt to confront racial injustices, woke-
ness now encompasses the belief that Americais irredeemably racist, men and women are not
“biologically distinct”—even when it comes to
the ability to give birth—and that the free expres-
sion of unfashionable opinions is an artifact of the
“‘white man’s culture.’” Wokeness even extends to
erasing words and replacing them with ludicrous
new terms, said Bret Stephens in The New York
Times. If you use “poor” rather than “oppressed,”
or “Latino” instead of “Latinx,” you are guilty of
a microaggression and must be silenced and pun-
ished. “This isn’t silly. It’s Orwellian.”The solution to left-wing intolerance, however,
isn’t right-wing intolerance, said David French
in BariWeiss.Substack.com. More than 20 states
have introduced legislation that dictates what
public schools can teach about America’s racial
history. A Texas state official is demanding that
school libraries admit whether they have books
on a list of 800 titles that might make students
feel “psychological distress because of their race
or sex,” including such respected works as The
Confessions of Nat Turner. In my own Nashville
suburb, parents sought to ban books about Mar-
tin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights hero Ruby
Bridges. Silencing ideas is un- American, whether
you call yourself “woke” or “anti-woke.”Woke: The meaning of a tarnished label
An armed anti-vax protest in Phoenix